SkyPilots from the City
Russell Senior
Today I received the text of an agreement with the City of Portland
for transfer of decommissioned hardware previously owned by MetroFi.
My understanding is that initially, this will consist of the 80-some
devices currently on City facilities, that City of Portland
Transportation crews can remove. The agreement has three
stipulations, none of which seems a problem, paraphrasing:
a) no warranty;
b) the City will deliver the donated property to one site of our
choosing (and has some reasonable conditions on this occurring in
a timely fashion);
c) if we can't use some of the donated property, we are required to
dispose of it in an environmentally responsible manner with
qualified regional recyclers and/or disposal facilities.
With the understanding that Free Geek would be a qualified regional
recycler and that they'll accept the parts we can't use, I see no
insurmountable problems in these requirements, and after I consult
with the PTP Board of Directors, I am prepared to sign the agreement.
One of the challenges will be to find a place to store the devices.
Initially, we can accept the devices at my house. I have some storage
space available. In order to stack more densely, the SkyExtenders can
have their omni-antennas, mounting hardware and power injectors
separated in about 15 minutes. The result is the "main can" portion,
which is about 24 inches tall and about 12-inches in diameter at the
base, tapering to 9 inches in diameter at the top. In this condition,
the devices can easily be reconstituted later for use intact.
80 devices at 2 cubic feet each is 160 cubic feet, that's about 13
linear feet of devices stacked 6 feet high.
Should we find that intact-use is infeasable, with another 10-20
minutes work we can break these down into much smaller and/or
disposable parts that would stack more densely.
In addition to my basement, we have had an offer of storage space in
the basement of OakTree Digital (downtown), which we'll need to
confirm.
In addition to 12 we have received previously and the 80 we should be
receiving soon, we may be in line for the 600-some-odd more devices
that are on PGE-owned street lights, though that is a bit further off,
as the City determines how it intends to have those taken down.
There are several ways I'll be looking for help amongst members and
friends of PTP. First, we could use help in the dismantling. Also, we
may need help storing and/or transporting devices, loading and
unloading. If people besides me want to experiment with these things,
to determine some way of creatively reusing them and/or add to the
public body of knowledge about them, that would be utterly fantastic.
Just contact me.
We will also be seeking partners in the community so that these
devices might be put to use. We'd like to work with those partners to
find mounting locations and bandwidth that can be used to support
community wireless networks.
Thanks!
--
Russell Senior, President
rus...@personaltelco.net
Sam Churchill
That's fantastic, Russell!
- Sam
--
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--
Sam Churchill
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Tyler van Houwelingen
Tyler v
Sent from my iPhone
On Jan 15, 2010, at 3:29 AM, Russell Senior
<rus...@personaltelco.net> wrote:
Christopher Chen
I need to call the guy at Oak Tree and ask if his basement is still available.
cc
> --
> The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/
> Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate
> Archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/
> Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette
> List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net
> To post to this group, send email to ptp-g...@googlegroups.com
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> ptp-general...@googlegroups.com
>
--
Chris Chen <muff...@gmail.com>
"The fact that yours is better than anyone else's
is not a guarantee that it's any good."
-- Motivational Poster
Michael Weinberg
> for transfer of decommissioned hardware previously owned by MetroFi.
> My understanding is that initially, this will consist of the 80-some
> devices currently on City facilities, that City of Portland
> Transportation crews can remove. The agreement has three
> stipulations, none of which seems a problem, paraphrasing:
I'm so glad to hear this! PTP spent the better part of a year working
towards this, enough cannot be said about the patience and diplomacy
that was put forth to get this resolution. Ultimately, it goes beyond
just the SkyPilots, and feels like a validation of our initial
suggestion to the city (in August 2007) that the community should
step-in where MetroFi failed to meet the Unwire Portland goals.
I hope we can get these things working for the community.
--
Michael Weinberg
Volunteer
Personal Telco Project, Inc.
A 501(c)(3) Non-Profit
Aaron Baer
Gary
be able to help with the repurposing part of the project. As a Unix
sysadmin, I have both personal & professional experience with a wide
variety of hardware architectures, embedded & otherwise.
At your presentation of the SkyPilot hardware a few months ago, I seem
to remember there being a 2nd board (not the PepLink) that had yet to
be hacked. It has a JTAG interface, however, doesn't it? Does it also
have a network interface? And does the PepLink board have one or two
Mini PCI slots?
Does the list archive have a post about the two boards? I seem to
remember a recent post by Russell that I'd like to review.
-Gary
Russell Senior
Gary> if I had a better idea what platform you're hoping to install, I
Gary> may be able to help with the repurposing part of the project. As
Gary> a Unix sysadmin, I have both personal & professional experience
Gary> with a wide variety of hardware architectures, embedded &
Gary> otherwise.
Gary> At your presentation of the SkyPilot hardware a few months ago,
Gary> I seem to remember there being a 2nd board (not the PepLink)
Gary> that had yet to be hacked. It has a JTAG interface, however,
Gary> doesn't it? Does it also have a network interface? And does the
Gary> PepLink board have one or two Mini PCI slots?
Two boards: skypilot-custom (handles the mesh antenna array); peplink
(handles local coverage). I have JTAG on the peplink board. I have
traced a few of the JTAG pins from the vias on the backside of the PPC
cpu to a header on the skypilot-custom board, but not all of them.
Also, at the present time, I have no JTAG software for talking to the
PPC board.
Each of the boards has a single mini-PCI slot and a serial console.
Gary> Does the list archive have a post about the two boards? I seem
Gary> to remember a recent post by Russell that I'd like to review.
I've been meaning to start a wiki page.
Gary
> Two boards: skypilot-custom (handles the mesh antenna array);
it's not my area of expertise but it looked as if the antenna array
was a poor design. we could ask some local ham radio antenna geeks for
a second opinion but that may be reason enough to put the PPC board to
some other use.
> Also, at the present time, I have no JTAG software for talking to
> the PPC board. Each of the boards has a single mini-PCI slot and a
> serial console.
JTAG can be used for serial connections, too. Do either of them
respond to TFTP during their boot phase or even have boot loaders that
enable the network interface prior to loading a kernel? And can you
interrupt the boot loader from the serial console?
> I've been meaning to start a wiki page.
I can help out there, too, by taking photos & writing up the details
we've discovered so far. I did find that post, by the way. it was in a
thread about the ALIX.
-Gary
Russell Senior
Gary> [...] Do either of them respond to TFTP during their boot phase
Gary> or even have boot loaders that enable the network interface
Gary> prior to loading a kernel? And can you interrupt the boot loader
Gary> from the serial console?
There is nothing that appears to allow interruption during boot on the
skypilot custom board. The Peplink board has a bootloader that you
can interrupt, but it does not use TFTP, but some crazy thing that
delivers an image via ICMP Type 15 packets. I have a packet dump of
that somewhere. In any case, when I tried to load an image built with
the PepLink SDK with their image uploader, I got a message that "Block
0 is invalid" or something, so my guess is that SkyPilot modified the
bootloader to look for a magic block. My guess could be wrong.
Christopher Chen
works for some time.
Russell and before him, Michael, have worked very hard to create ties
with the City throughout the whole MetroFi debacle. I remember that in
his departing remarks Michael expressed disappointment at the seeming
lack of political movement during his term. I'm happy to reflect that
the seeds sewn over the last few years are finally sprouting. 80 of
them, to be exact. And many more to come.
We owe you a few drinks. Thank you gentlemen!
cc
P.S. I spoke with a former node host who has volunteered storage space
sufficient to hold the skypilots.